Eiffel Tower Encore

Mornin' y'all!  I did not let Ryan ride his bike or rollerblades to school this morning as it's supposed to be rainy and SNOWY this afternoon.  Like my dad says, does Colorado know it's May?  Ryan only has two more weeks of school after this one and we have snow in the forecast.  Wild.

Anyway, I have another Eiffel Tower card to share today:

Do I have at least four SU! stamp sets featuring the Eiffel Tower?  Yes.  Did I buy this Eiffel Grunge stamp set from Unity last week anyway?  Also yes.  Do I have impulse control issues?  Probably.  But come on, that's a cool Eiffel Tower!  I stamped it in my newly inked up Basic Gray ink pad, die cut it, and added some color to the flowers with a blender pen as well as Wink of Stella on the tower, which doesn't show up in the picture because it's shy like that.

I've hit all the ingredients for the As You See It recipe challenge:

One word sentiment:  Bonjour!  Die cut:  four dies from three different sets.  Flowers:  on the stamped image and the patterned paper.  Frame:  patterned paper around the main image panel.  Shades of pink:  Pink Pirouette (I love this pink, I have been playing with it again recently) and Pretty in Pink.  I tried a Regal Rose card base but I didn't like it, so I stuck with two shades of pink.

For the filigree pattern behind the tower image, I tried stamping it with Pink Pirouette ink but it came out blotchy, so I flipped the cardstock over and stamped it in VersaMark and embossed with clear powder.  That means my card counts for the Inspire. Create. Challenge:

You can't tell from the picture, but the filigree looks shiny if you look at it from an angle, the tower is subtly sparkly, and I added Pretty in Pink sparkle gems.  So yeah, this card also fits in perfectly with this week's Paper Players challenge:

And to go along with my Eiffel Tower cards of late, I recently started reading a book about an early medieval French and English queen.  I listened to several episodes of You're Dead to Me over the weekend, which is a history podcast produced by the BBC and it's really entertaining and informative, and one of the episodes was about Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Listening to that reminded me that I was pretty sure I'd bought a book about her at some point, and as I had just finished a book, I did a search on my Kindle.  I was wrong, I have SIX books about Eleanor of Aquitaine.  Ha!  Okay, one is about her daughters, but still.  I picked one of the biographies and got started on Sunday night, it's really interesting.  Eleanor is the only woman to have been queen of both France and England, she went on crusade with her first husband, she's the mother of Richard the Lion-Heart and the dastardly Prince John of Robin Hood fame, and her second husband locked her up for over a decade because she wouldn't do what she was told.  She still outlived him I think.  Fascinating lady.

I've just finished my tea so I should take Daphne for a misty and cold walk around the neighborhood; the rain and snow is supposed to start after noon so this is the time to go.  Cheers...or should I say, ciao!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Eiffel Grunge by Unity Stamps, Filigree, Carte Postale
Ink:  Basic Gray, Pink Pirouette, Soft Sea Foam, VersaMark
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Basic Gray, Thick Basic White, Pretty in Pink DSP
Accessories:  Eiffel Grunge die by Unity Stamps, Rectangles Stitched dies, Stitched So Sweetly dies, clear EP, Dimensionals, Pretty in Pink Gems

Blackberry Blissful

Mornin' y'all and happy Star Wars day!  Ryan and I said May the Fourth Be With You to each other and then he tried to argue with me when I said Darth Vader could stop blaster bolts with his hand.  LISTEN, Padawan, I've been a Star Wars fan for 40 years longer than you!!!  And don't EVEN argue with me when it comes to the original trilogy, I know my stuff.

Okay, so I spent most of the weekend making cookies for the hubs to take into work and I didn't plan well enough to have a Star Wars card to share today, so we'll have to make do with this:

I've made a few cards with Blackberry Bliss as the main color and I like it.  The latest Color Dare gave me an excuse to make this card:

I used Blackberry Bliss (of course), Cloud Cover, and Soft Sea Foam.  I really like how the two lighter colors pop on that Blackberry card base, and the pearls I used are actually Soft Succulent but they blend really well with the two colors I used here today.  My greeting is stamped on Basic Beige; I've discovered that I like the cardstock but the ink just turns out to be a really yucky sick greenish color so I'm going to pretend that the ink doesn't exist.

I also used the new sketch from Sunday Stamps:

All the elements are there, though my placement of them is a little bit different since my greeting isn't as long as in the sketch.  This time I mostly played with the die cut ferns from Fern & Flora, and I have some Blackberry Bliss ribbon in my stash that dates back to when it was an In Color, ha!

That's it for now, peeps.  Have a great Star Wars day, I'm wearing a shirt with an Ewok on it : )  May the Fourth be with you!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Fern & Flora
Ink:  Blackberry Bliss, Cloud Cover
Paper:  Blackberry Bliss, Cloud Cover, Soft Sea Foam, Basic Beige
Accessories:  Fern & Flora dies, Dimensionals, Festive Pearls, Blackberry Bliss Stitched Satin Ribbon

Girl Time with The Paper Players

Happy Sunday,  y'all!  Seems like stampers enjoyed Stef's sketch last week for The Paper Players just as much as I did : ) and now it's time for a new challenge brought to us by the wonderful Jaydee:

Girl time!  Your card doesn't have to be pink, but mine is.  Here's what I made:

I once went on a girls' trip to Paris with my friend Krissy (we lived in Germany at the time so it was just a short train ride away, so why not) and I had Paris on the brain because I recently bought some address labels with artwork of the Eiffel Tower and flowers on them, so I thought I'd make that in card form.  I actually started this card with the Eyelet Blooms die that was the April product of the month and built everything else on top of it.  I love the look of pale Pink Pirouette with black accents, and added in a bit of Pool Party just because I liked it.  The big flowers are from an old, old stamp set called Embrace Life, and I used a blending brush to add some ink to the flower centers and then used a marker to add darker pink too before I fussy cut them.  A few rhinestones and some crocheted trim and here we are.

Hope you'll enjoy this challenge too, after all we have Mother's Day coming up so we need some feminine cards, right?  The hubs asked me the other day if I wanted anything in particular for Mother's Day and I told him he bought me two more orchids at the store the other day...okay I bought them but he has to take care of them because both my thumbs are the blackest black and I can't keep plants alive for anything.  We already had a yellow orchid, and I got a blue-violet one with freckles and a teeny-tiny one with white flowers.  I do love to have orchids by my kitchen sink, especially since I'm not the one taking care of them.  We had five tiny ones above our kitchen sink in Germany.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Parisian Beauty, Embrace Life, Happy Happenings
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Pink Pirouette
Paper:  Pink Pirouette, Pool Party, Basic Black, Basic White, Parisian Blossoms Specialty DSP 
Accessories:  Parisian dies, Eyelet Blooms die, some kind of label punch, rhinestones, black crocheted trim, Dimensionals

Check out the other design team creations on the Paper Players blog, and you can hop through their individual blogs to leave some comments too:

The Paper Players Design Team

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese